Phoenix getting a timely new downtown museum

Holocaust education center to open in 2026

The Arizona Jewish Historical Society will open a new 27,000-square-foot Holocaust education center in the heart of downtown Phoenix, representatives from the center announced Tuesday.

The “Hilton Family Holocaust Education Center” will be a $30 million, threelevel facility geared toward educating middle- and high-school students about the Holocaust and other genocides through digitally immersive multi-media experiences. It is set to break ground at the end of 2024 and open in 2026.

It will include recorded histories from Holocaust survivors who moved to Arizona to restart their lives, plus artifacts, artwork and holographic visuals that offer interactive question-and-answer capability.

It will be a first-of-its-kind in Arizona and expand upon the existing Cutler Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center at First Street and McDowell Road just east of the Burton Barr Public Library.

Lawrence Bell, executive director of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society, said the center is needed now more than ever.

“We need a Holocaust education center because a growing number of millennials do not possess even a basic knowledge of the history of the Holocaust,” Bell said. “Because that same population of students is becoming increasingly radicalized by politics and social media, and beginning to embrace many traditionally anti-Semitic motifs, tropes and ideas.”

While the idea for the facility was first conceived in 2015 and centered around an art museum, program manager and Rabbi Jeffrey Schesnol said, the focus shifted to education in the last few years, particularly after community members began noticing the dearth of education surrounding the Holocaust.

The Oct. 7 attack against 1,400 Jewish civilians in Israel carried out by Hamas further illustrated the need for the facility, Schesnol and Bell said.

The Anti-Defamation League in 2022 reported a surge in anti-Semitic events and another drastic surge following Oct. 7.

“In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, many in academia actually blame Israel for the violence against itself by the simple virtue of its existence as a supposed settler-colonial state,” Bell said.

Plus, he added, Holocaust survivors are dying and won’t be around forever to share their histories. The facility, he said, is meant to encapsulate those emotional testimonies and allow them to live on to influence future generations.

The announcement comes after Phoenix voters approved a $500 million bond program in November, which includes $2 million set aside for the Jewish Historical Society.

Phoenix Vice Mayor Yassamin Ansari celebrated the announcement, saying the education center would make Phoenix a more inclusive community that is mindful of the past and committed to investing in the future.

The facility is also funded by myriad donors, including Steve Hilton, for whom the education center is named. Hilton’s father, Samuel Hilton, survived the Holocaust and was liberated in Prague in 1945. He was the only one of 100 in his family to survive, Hilton said at an event Tuesday to announce the center.

The expansion also comes twoand-a-half years after Arizona passed a law requiring students in the state to receive Holocaust education twice between seventh and 12th grade.

The facility is expected to welcome roughly 120 students per day.

Sheryl Bronkesh, president of the Phoenix Holocaust Association, said the center was long awaited not just by survivors and their descendants, but by educators who teach about the Holocaust and other genocides.

“By studying the past, we can influence today’s students to create a better future. And by understanding the dangers of staying silent in the face of evil, we hope this new center and the stories shared by survivors will inspire young people to become ‘Upstanders’ who speak up and take action,” Bronkesh said.